“Here we are!”

He had found above one grave the number of the regiment.

Chichi and her husband promptly dismounted again.  Then Dona Luisa, with sad resolution, biting her lips to keep the tears back.  Then the three devoted themselves to assisting the father who had thrown off his fur lap-robe.  Poor Desnoyers!  On touching the ground, he swayed back and forth, moving forward with the greatest effort, lifting his feet with difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.

“Lean on me, my poor dear,” said the old wife, offering her arm.

The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step without their aid.

Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.

The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering.  Rene was doing the same on the other side of the road.  Chichi went on alone, the wind whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a name.  Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably—­revealing thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty, of consummated love following her course through this land of death and desolation.

In the distance sounded feebly her father’s voice: 

“Not yet?”

The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son’s resting place as soon as possible.

A half hour thus dragged by without any result—­always unfamiliar names, anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments.  Don Marcelo was no longer able to stand.  Their passage across the irregularities of the soft earth had been torment for him.  He was beginning to despair. . . .  Ay, they would never find Julio’s remains!  The parents, too, had been scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after cross.  They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name. . . .  No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.

It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, “Here. . . .  Here it is!” The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step.  All the family were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier, and beginning to be covered with herbage.  At the head was a cross with letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of his comrades-at-arms—­“Desnoyers.” . . .  Then in military abbreviations, the rank, regiment and company.

A long silence.  Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on the cross—­those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep.  Till then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing itself in the usual ways.